There is too much TV now.

There, I've said it. Gone are the days when there were only a few channels and everyone grew up watching the same dozen or so shows. Those shared collective entertainment experiences of the early TV generations helped to make the super-referential pop culture we all enjoy now. Back in the day, we all knew who shot JR, but now we can't answer the question, did Glenn just die on the Walking Dead? No, because I haven't seen it yet, and SPOILERS! Glenn, who's Glenn? What show again? No I'm not caught up, I stopped watching it in season four, I don't watch TWD, I don't like scary shows, I watch OITNB instead. Sigh.

Because there were so few channels and shows back then, you could go into work or school the next day and bank on the fact that everyone had watched the latest episode, because there were no repeats! There was no catching it again tomorrow night on Hulu, or saving it to your DVR, or whatever. In the 80s you might have 'taped' your show but that was cumbersome. If you missed it, that episode was GONE until maybe it possibly popped up again in reruns over the summer. So we all planned our schedules around our favorite shows and watched faithfully week to week.

You would think in this era with so much repeat access to a set of episodes, that you can still bet that your coworkers will be as caught up as you, even if it takes them a week or so to get there. Not so. Like the microwave, on-demand tv technology didn't free up our time, it just created more time for us to do other things with, like watch more tv. So, we're too busy to watch live tv, and because there is too much tv, we can't possibly have time to watch it all. And because there is too much good tv, any random set of 10 people will likely all be watching different tv shows. You can watch and re-watch selected episodes of the Wire, Rick and Morty, or binge-watch whole seasons of shows from the 90s. What's current to you isn't necessarily current to others in your peer group. Just think, future generations will have grown up watching whatever they want whenever they want with no reference to a calendar or sequence of events. There will be fewer shows that become shows that EVERYONE watches, and therefore fewer puns and shared references that unite us in pop culture and friendship.

Sometimes in order to bolster work relationships I confess I've tuned into a show that my peers were watching just to be part of the conversation and see what all the fuss was about. We all use tv as a social currency, something to fall back on in conversation when we've run out of small talk. When it works, it works great; many conversations can be had about tv before you realize you've really spent an hour talking about nothing with an acquaintance. But when you can't find a show in common with someone it is the worst. There is literally nothing left to talk about!